THE ORGANISERS of the Droitwich Food and Drink Festival will be starting to make plans for next year’s event before the final curtain has come down on this year’s annual culinary spectacle.

Most of the festival took place over the weekend of Saturday June 18 and Sunday June 19 when the town centre was filled with stalls run by different local food and drink producers, foodie celebrities, entertainers and visitors.

But it is more than just a weekend gastronomic gala as the organisers use different ways to engage local people in the subject of food and drink.

This year six local schools and one residential home in the Droitwich area signed up to find out more about food through the festival.

Organiser Patrick Davis said: “We contact all the schools and invite them to get involved. The ones who are interested come back to us and they tell us what they want. Some might want to know more about burgers, what goes into them and cooking them, that’s what we do.

“We linked local chefs with local schools, with an emphasis on local food and ingredients and the importance of preparation and cooking rather than just getting a take-away or ready meal.”

The last of the schools to taste the benefits of local ingredients was St Joseph’s Roman Catholic School when chef Scott Sneddon from the town’s Bullocks Café went along to help Year 4 children to prepare a three-course meal.

The menu they chose was chicken, tomato and mozzarella millefeuille for starter; steak and onion pie for main course and Eton Mess for dessert.

“The chef explained what he was going to do and told them about all the ingredients and equipment. The children really got involved and were hands-on mixing up the pastry. They had about two hours preparing it and put it in the oven. Then they ate it. It was lovely to see them getting involved. It was very interactive and they thoroughly enjoyed it.”

The final festival event for this year will be a summer barbecue for the residents of Newlandhurst Residential Home – a home for adults with special needs. This will be arranged once the British summer decides to turn up, said Patrick.

He added that the organising committee is meeting next week and will start to work on next year’s festival. He said they would look at what worked well this year, what didn’t work so well, what can be improved and feedback from stallholders. Some of the main attractions have to be booked early to guarantee their appearance.

“By next week I will have a pretty clear idea of the direction we are going in.”

He said there were far more visitors this year than in previous years. “It was the biggest attendance from what we could see. The demonstration by Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain was full. She was extremely popular. The feedback so far from the producers has been pretty good.”

Patrick said Nadiya enjoyed the event too and was given a lovely surprise in the cookery demonstration tent when entertainers Wilf’s Carnival Band played “If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake" and then presented her with a special cake to mark her appearance.

Lizzy Hughes from Our Lizzy Cooking, who attended the festival, said: “The festival was excellent I loved the way the whole town got involved too. I hadn't been to Droitwich for a while and it was fabulous to see the town buzzing.”

While Mid Worcestershire MP Nigel Huddleston commented that the range of events, entertainment and variety of stall was very impressive and that the bar had been set very high for next year.